


worthy

by xathira



Series: Lanternuary 2021 [1]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: 3 guesses as to whom that is, Beast Wirt, Beast!Wirt - Freeform, Lanternuary 2021, an AU where everyone lives in Pottsfield, an heir must be chosen, e plurbus unum, one out of many, the Beast's lantern is passed down
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28835103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: The Beast comes to Pottsfield to choose an heir among mortals, one who will carry the Dark Lantern and lead lost souls to their doom...For the Lanternuary prompte pluribus unum- "one out of many."
Series: Lanternuary 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2114280
Comments: 17
Kudos: 39





	1. black snow

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this instead of studying or finishing another chapter of POTU ~~or pigfic or crossover fic oops~~

It is just past noon when Wirt stops playing clarinet, distracted by a drifting mote of black that falls outside the schoolhouse window like a raven’s feather. His halting, forehead-wrinkling rendition of a Brahms clarinet sonata peeters into silence as he cranes his neck to catch sight of what fluttered beyond the glass. The world is white winter wonder, all snow-covered and serene, and he thinks he must’ve imagined that mote of black when…

“Beatrice, is there a fire somewhere?”

The bluebird dozing on his shoulder ruffles into grudging wakefulness. It’s cold in the drafty building and the only thing keeping her from avian torpor is the warmth of the boy she’s perching on. “I hope so. My feet are frozen. Can’t you sit closer to the stove? And maybe put another log in?”

“No, seriously, look.” Wirt stands to squint toward the woods. The fields of Pottsfield are smooth vanilla frosting with toothpick fences separating them from the oak and elm and Edelwood… except where inky speckles interrupt the pale. More dark flecks spin from the sky while he watches; they mingle with natural snowflakes, a dance of black and white. A queasy fascination twinges in his gut. “Looks like soot. Is someone’s fireplace…?”

A pair of skeletal Pottsfielders in their wicker winter garb march solemnly past Wirt’s vision, stamping the snow with their bark-clad metatarsals. Adults that haven’t passed on and been planted follow closely behind, looking as if they hurried to put on their coats, breath clouding between them as they talk. They seem agitated. Worried. 

“What has _their_ knickers in a bunch?” Beatrice grumbles. Wirt hears the unease in her tone. Both of them jump at a knock on the schoolhouse door.

Someone blusters in a frigid gust of air when they shoulder into the threshold. It’s Greg—of course it is, jumping headfirst into everything—and his cheeks are apple-red from the bite of the season and wild little-kid excitement. He darts toward Wirt without bothering to close the door behind him and tugs insistently on his older brother’s cloak and yammers a mile a minute.

“Wirt! Beatrice! Enoch called a town meeting _just now_ because it’s snowing black stuff and the old boneheads are all _‘this portends a new era’_ and _‘can’t believe it’s been so long’_ and it’s a REAL big deal—”

“Don’t call them boneheads,” Wirt admonishes reflexively, although his stomach is sliding in increments further down his abdominal cavity. “What, exactly, did you overhear? Why is Enoch calling a meeting?”

But Greg has now fastened his hand around Wirt’s and is pulling him like a mule out onto the dirt path, chattering nonsense theories on what he thinks the flakes of soot might be, since there’s no bonfire to toss them across town and they appear to be spinning _directly out of the sky._

Beatrice huddles closer to Wirt’s neck. He can tell by the bristle of her blue feathers that she’s just as disturbed as he is by the strange stygian snow, which falls more thickly as Greg tugs them along to the center of town. Charcoal dusts rooftops and sticks to window panes; it mixes with the footprints of the other Pottsfield citizens, turning the fresh slush grey; it dots the bloodless sky like dalmation spots, like letters typed on a blank page, and Wirt is half-relieved to see that other young flesh-and-blood Pottsfielders like himself are equally perplexed by the phenomenon. 

He manages to pluck a stained snowflake out of its trajectory and inspects it on his fingertip. The flake is six-pointed like its classic crystal brethren, only pitch-colored, and when it melts it leaves an opalescent drop on his skin.

Like oil…

“The Beast is returning, this is the first sign!”

“You know the rhyme: _when black snow blows, The Beast goes home._ Enoch probably smelled it in the wind before the storm was even a cloud in the sky…”

“What else could it be? Some witch-curse?”

“Enoch would never allow…”

Wirt’s heart squeezes in time with his fingers around Greg’s hand. “H-Has The Beast been spotted? What’s going on?”

The piping question is directed at anyone who’ll listen around him in the growing, milling crowd, all pushing along like salmon toward the biggest barn in Pottsfield. Many fleshed adults and children offer him confused shrugs or doubtful, dismissive smirks—as if they think the skeletons are overreacting. None of _them_ have ever witnessed the like of this weather. That makes Wirt fret more; whatever is happening has a history so old that only the dead remember.

“Calm down, Wirt, your pulse sounds like a drum,” Beatrice whispers to him. “We can always blow off the meeting… this sounds like boring town-council stuff that doesn’t involve us—”

“Beatrice! Beatrice?”

Two bluebirds wing overhead. They dive toward Wirt when they spy their sister attempting to hide behind Wirt’s ear; one of them flaps in front of Wirt’s face while the other plops on the boy’s unoccupied shoulder. 

Beatrice huffs an annoyed breath at the bird hovering by Wirt’s nose. “What is it, Audrey? We’re on our way to the barn like everybody else… totally not thinking of ditching.”

“You’d better not be, because everyone has to go,” snips the bluebird sister. She tweets sweetly at Wirt, apologetic. “Make sure Beatrice doesn’t sneak away, will you? Enoch sounded ever so concerned… I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for the snow, and he wants to ensure that we all hear it at once so there’s no confusion.”

Beatrice mimics her sibling in a nasal voice. Audrey sticks out her thin tongue and wheels away with the other bluebird sibling who tosses a quick “see ya later” to Greg before flying off. 

By the time the trio reach the barn, most of the town has gathered inside. Greg meanders around established family clumps and groups muttering paranoid theories until he finds a stack of hay bales in a corner, high enough that he and his brother can sit and see the whole tableau. Usually, when Enoch gathers the town, there’s drinks and snacks for all—lemonade and shortbread in the spring, iced tea and buttermilk biscuits in the summer, piping hot cider and cinnamon donuts in autumn. Greg overtly searches for a picnic table loaded with goodies… but Wirt understands that this is no ordinary meeting. It was called so suddenly that many people were lucky to shrug on their shawls before dashing outside. Tension buzzes beneath the rafters where the bluebird family perches, twittering to one another. 

A hush falls when Enoch’s grand maypole husk stirs. It slowly stands up from where it leans against a wall, ribbons stretching as the mayor acclimates himself to the larger skin. His words pour over the crowd like cool molasses. 

“Good afternoon, neighbors. Sorry for the short notice, but I did not think it wise to delay the announcement that I need to make.” 

Forgiving murmurs from all. Everyone adored their benevolent mayor.

The maypole bows. “Doubtless you’ve all glimpsed the unique weather that’s visited us today… and I’m sure you’re curious as to what it means.”

“It’s the coming of the next Beast!” a wicker-clothed Pottsfielder shouts, exasperated. “We tried to tell ‘em, Enoch—”

“What do you mean, ‘next Beast’?” someone else gripes. “We’ve only ever known the one, what does this have to do with—”

_“Silence.”_ A gentle command from the maypole, a pressure like a father’s hand on one’s shoulder. Even Greg stops kicking his feet against the hay bale he’s on to sit up straighter. “It’s true: this is a sign that the Lord of the Forest will return to us this year to find his heir, and light the Dark Lantern with a new burning soul. He will be here by nightfall—not to add to his woodland grave, but to transfer his crown.” 

Deathly quiet grips the town. Nobody dares to speak. Dares to breathe. Wirt’s body goes numb. 

The maypole’s head hangs slightly, as if sad, though emotion is difficult to glean from that broad cloth face. “This is all perfectly natural… no stranger than the turning of the seasons or the return of our loved ones from the field-soil. It’s been a long time since the lantern changed hands, is all. A long, long time…”

Miss Clara, standing by the maypole for support, takes a ribbon in her willow-woven hand to comfort the mayor. Though the living Pottsfielders are right to fear The Beast when they leave the safety of town, they all know how precious the Undead Warden is to Enoch. It is not uncommon to see the two walking side-by-side on the outskirts of town, joking and flirting in their mysterious cat-and-mouse way, both of them melting in the presence of the other. Enoch is always brighter when the antlered monster has visited, the crops richer and more numerous; The Beast has been known to show mercy to citizens who wander into his domain, leading them back home with their arms full of foraged berries and mushrooms and nuts. 

Wirt had assumed that they’d been that way forever. He hadn’t known that the role of The Beast _could_ be passed to an heir… he struggles to wrap his mind around what that even means, fingers digging into straw and a lump lodged in his throat. It can’t be good, whatever it is. He’s sensitive enough to feel the grief that Enoch works hard to bury in front of his town.

“What do you mean, ‘find his heir’?” blurts Mr. Corduroy from where he stands next to his wife and two children. “Is The Beast… dying?”

Shock ripples through the mob. _Dying? The Beast?_ Could the black snow be a sign of decay? Beatrice hisses “No way,” her wings unfolding, and sweat dapples Wirt’s temples. 

“The Beast can’t _die_ —he’s The Beast!”

“Why should he come _here_ for an heir? How is that decided?”

“We’ve TOLD you—there have been other Wardens before, this one’s time has passed, he’s tired and he needs to rest and that means—”

“The Beast’s mantle was always destined to be exchanged, lest the Unknown stagnate and rot,” announces Enoch authoritatively, ribbons rising toward the roof. “It is a law of nature that cannot be fought. None can know how long a single Beast’s reign may last, but it is folly to assume that this reign is eternal simply because so many of you have never known any different. It is my own fault for not discussing this inevitable shift… for not preparing you all. I, too, wanted to believe it would never end. I purposefully turned my eye from the inescapable. I, too, am not ready.” The mayor’s tone tightens perceptibly; he must be doing his best not to crumble—and that _terrifies_ Wirt, to contemplate how momentous this occasion is. 

Just this morning he’d slipped away for some peace and quiet to practice clarinet before Greg woke up and wondered where he’d gone. He’d had an apple for breakfast. He was supposed to help with chores at the Donner household later. And now he was being told that the laws of this world include a power shift that involves Pottsfield—sleepy, idyllic Pottsfield—and he’s so stunned all he can do is sit mutely with his heart a stone inside his chest.

Enoch soothes his anxiously chattering citizens with a low murmur. “I’ll explain what is to come… for now, we have arrangements to make. Beast will be here by sunset. I’d like to welcome him with the most fabulous Pottsfield hospitality we’re capable of: food, wine, decorations—make it a real festival of sorts. Do we think we can sort that out?” 

Enoch inclines his head toward Miss Clara who nods in vigorous affirmation. If she had eyes, the look she’d send all the Pottsfielders would be steely. “Absolutely, Mr. Mayor. I’ll gather the party-planners. We’ll give Beast a celebration fit for a king—won’t we, girls?”

A throng of ladies—skeleton and skinned alike—conglomerate about Miss Clara and immediately begin conversing in energetic, hushed words. Beatrice butts her tiny head against Wirt’s ear, her claws pricking through his cloak.

“Uh… do you understand what’s going on? Because I for _sure_ don’t understand what’s going on.”

“I hope _I_ get to be the next Beast,” says Greg passionately, turning to Wirt with an ear-to-ear grin that betrays the fact he only heard every other thing Enoch said. “Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe he’ll pick BOTH of us, and you and me and Beatrice can go live in the woods—”

“He won’t pick a kid,” Wirt interrupts, voice cracking. _Lest the Unknown stagnate and rot…_ what had Enoch meant by that? He remembers the vertigo he felt when Polly Ringwald had insisted that the earth was flat, and that if you ran to the edge it would all flip over—he hadn’t believed her, obviously, because that’s _dumb,_ yet the visual of the universe spinning upside-down had made him nauseated to his core. He feels that way right now: about to puke on his shoes. “M-Maybe he won’t pick _anybody._ What does it take to be a Beast, anyway? Why now? Why any of us?”

“Like it matters,” Beatrice quips, pretending to be indifferent. “I’m sure Enoch knows. He’ll deal with it.”

“We should help with the party,” Greg continues, bouncing in place. “C’mon, let’s go see what Miss Clara needs! I could be a taste-tester for all the snacks, I bet, if I ask nicely…”

“Sure,” Wirt says blankly, unable to shake his malaise. Beatrice is right. He should calm down. Enoch will deal with it.

There’s no way that any of this involves _him._


	2. arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wirt wants answers.

The town flurries into an uproar of frantic activity and determined fervor—for although most Pottsfielders have no idea what’s going on, they _do_ know how to throw a decent party. 

Decorations that would usually be saved to celebrate the solstice are dragged out of storage and erected down every street: wreaths of red winter berries and evergreen sprigs, cinnamon-scented pinecones strung like garlands, candles staged to be lit in every window, artful arrangements of lucky animal bones on the front of every door. 

The Feast Table is set up in the meeting barn with enough seats for all the heads of each family, and smaller picnic tables are arranged along the walls. Everyone donates their best china and silverware; the result is a charming array of simple handmade stoneware and fancy plates painted with cornucopias and turkeys, songbirds and daisies, clovers and Celtic knots. 

Skeletons dither to find more dazzling vestments for their bones and the living struggle to decide how best to present themselves to The Beast. They never thought twice what that demon thought of them when he lurked on _his_ side of the fence… but today they fret about shined boots and clean skirts, as flustered as the lovestruck Enoch. 

And _Enoch…_ Wirt has never seen their mayor so distracted. The Harvest Lord inhabits his maypole body and cat-skin simultaneously to better oversee all aspects of the Lantern Festival, and this hectic splitting of himself seems to amplify his distress until Wirt senses it like a ringing in his ears. It’s amazing that anyone can work with that overbearing seething _panic_ pressing in on them—surely Enoch will collapse in a howling pile at any second, inconsolable, and then his town really will be utterly directionless.

The Party Planning Committee ropes Wirt into assisting with the baking, both because he’s shown a talent with pies and because Greg is most neatly distracted amidst the watchful bustle of a kitchen. Since the boys have no parents, Wirt _should_ be with the other heads of household, forming a game plan to meet The Beast… but his elders scold him if he lets Greg out of his sight. It’d been a blessing to steal as much private time as he had in the schoolhouse that morning; while he rolls out another crust, tosses another pile of Granny Smith apple slices in spices and sugar, Wirt plots how to confront Enoch with all his questions…

A grandmother tasks Greg with mashing cubed butter into a bowl of flour. The little boy joyfully rolls the mixture with his fingers, playing more than working, chatting up anyone that walks by his designated spot at the kitchen island. “Does The Beast like apple pie, or blueberry pie? Or mixed berries? Or mincemeat? Or _lemon?”_

Wirt rolls his eyes at the way the busy ladies and gentlemen coo at Greg’s asinine questions. He doesn’t remember a time when he’d ever been that carefree; when Greg had been born six years ago, Wirt had suddenly been “too old” to be silly. He was inexplicably supposed to “know better” about every aspect of his behavior, expected to spontaneously become wise beyond his age—as if having a sibling thrust upon him had transformed Wirt into an adult overnight.

In two more years, Greg will be as old as Wirt was when they lost their parents… but nobody will expect _him_ to grow up faster.

Someone pinches Wirt’s ear, catching his sour face. “Buck up, boy. Be a good example to your brother.”

The older boy bites the inside of his cheek until it hurts. He concentrates on slicing intricate snowflake-shapes out of flatly rolled dough with a skill that is taken for granted by his baking peers. “Yes, Mr. Weebee.”

“That’s a good lad.”

Greg knocks his bowl to the floor during a grand flourish—whipping up his arms to make antlers of them, showing off for his adoring audience—and the crack of pottery on the tiles is somehow Wirt’s fault. “Oops—I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry, Wirt.” Everyone tuts and clucks until the elder boy, ears red, sweeps the flour-butter mush and cracked bits of bowl up—wishing he could disappear. “It was an accident. Honest.” 

“It’s no trouble, Gregory,” ameliorates Ms. Lumina, choosing to pat the little boy on the back rather than assist Wirt with cleaning up the mess. “We all have accidents, and today is extra stressful!”

The last time Wirt had dropped a plate, he’d been scolded out of the kitchen.

“Oh, dear, we’re out of butter… Wirt, would you mind fetching two more jars from the pantry? You remember where it is, right?”

He should: he’s the one who put them there. “Yes, Ms. Lumina,” the young man says with forced politeness. He leaves Greg to be petted and fretted over by all the aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, and darts out of the kitchen—already untying his apron to toss aside.

Wirt isn’t going to fetch butter. He’s going to get to the bottom of this Beast business so he isn’t standing around like a moon-eyed frog when the _real_ important stuff goes down.

It is not snowing any harder when the lad jogs into the road, yet the steady fall of black has dusted every rooftop like flecks from a peppercorn grinder everywhere Wirt looks. Soot collects on his shoulders as he wanders; perhaps this Beastly snowfall will stain his clothes, the town, and leave a reminder of today years after a new heir has been crowned. 

He has the strangest urge to roll in an inky snowdrift, and let the shadow seep deep into his cloak.

By chance Wirt happens to cross Enoch in his feline form right as the mayor is trotting away from town square. The cat’s tail is held high, crooked at the tip like a candy cane, and twitching minutely back and forth in time with the Harvest Lord’s cryptic thoughts. Wirt has to call out several times for Enoch to notice him; the midnight tom must be on his way to the next chore on his list, and is clearly far too busy to deal with a whiny teenage boy. 

But, as is the way with kind and patient Enoch, the cat halts to make time for Wirt.

“Ah, young Gregory’s brother,” Enoch purrs congenially, paw-deep in the snow. “What can I do for you?”

Wirt stiffens; he is always _Gregory’s brother,_ the older Palmer boy. For once Wirt would like someone to see him for _himself—_ not as an afterthought to the endearing sibling that everyone apparently preferred. It requires two or three heartbeats for him to regather his nervous inquiries. “Yeah, that’s me. I was wondering… h-how will an heir be chosen? Is it like, a contest or something? Is it random? Will the Beast just… p-pick someone out of the crowd?”

The black cat grins tolerantly up at him, silvery whiskers curling with his smile. Patronizing. “Not to worry, my boy. I’ve already selected the best candidates from the grown-ups.” He puts an emphasis on that last bit, offering reassurance; Wirt grits his teeth through an unexpected splinter. “The Lantern is no burden for a child… all I need from you is to look after Gregory and the other littluns, alright? Can you do that for me? They’ll need someone to look up to, during the commotion and hullabaloo.” 

_A child._ He’s supposed to be old enough to set an example for Greg, but Wirt won’t be welcome at the Feast Table with the other adults for three years at least. Enoch hadn’t even _considered_ speaking to him with the other heads of house. Bitterness coats his mouth. “Alright,” he answers, understanding when he is being dismissed.

Enoch rubs up against Wirt’s shins with an approving rumble. Then he’s off, weaving between other Pottsfielder legs, to disappear around a corner where he’s needed.

Frustration hits Wirt high in his chest. He’s been content to ignore The Beast while living in the safety of his hometown, to pretend that he does not hear those earthy bass lyrics weaving the wind on desolate nights, but tonight that distant monster is coming _here_ to hunt—and Wirt feels unmoored. How is he supposed to blindly accept that a new era is beginning? How can he follow when he doesn’t understand the rules? Why is no one challenging the black snow? Enoch? The declaration that it _must_ be one of them to become the new Edelwood Gravedigger, after centuries of never hearing that law?

And why does Wirt care so much?!

Restless, the boy pivots on his heels in a different direction—any direction—to discover if one of the skeletons has the answers he craves. 

The Turban family is working to build a decorative archway over the main entrance to Pottsfield. Bony citizens work with their living descendants to hammer rough timber into an elegantly geometric trellis that Wirt would admire if he could ignore the persistent itch in his brain. He steps up to help Eric Turban hold an aspen pole steady and attempts to insinuate himself in the ongoing conversation as smoothly and naturally as possible.

“Er—do any of you know h-how the ceremony works? The Lantern ceremony? The one h-happening… uh… tonight?”

The Turbans pause to stare at him, hammers and nails frozen mid-swing. Eric Turban gawks at Wirt, having not seen him there until he’d spoken.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with your brother?” one of the elder Turbans questions, shaking his hammer. “Never mind about the ceremony—you won’t be there. Too young.”

“I just want to know how it works,” Wirt pleads. “Isn’t—aren’t any of you curious? Don’t you remember what happened when the last Beast was chosen?”

“Weren’t there,” responds a different Turban, turning his back to knock at a nail. “Our clan came here _after._ Hundreds of years ago, it would’a been. We were as surprised as you were when this dirty snow started fallin’... thought bein’ The Beast were a permanent job, didn’t we Eric?”

“Ask the DiChioggias,” Eric advises to brush Wirt off. “They might know.”

The family known for their exquisite needlepoint is one of the original Pottsfield families. Wirt treks toward the eastern side of town to find their sprawling cottage, where half the family is working on sewing together squares for a ceremonial quilt to hang in the barn later. They set Wirt in a corner to help stitch as soon as he kicks the snow off his shoes; he’s been by often enough for dinner that they do not blink at his arrival.

Luckily, the DiChioggias have existed for so long that their ancient matriarch recalls the old legends… even if she can’t bring back the memory of actually being there when the Lantern was last exchanged. She isn’t entirely sure she _was_ there… and this has Wirt’s jaw flapping, incredulous—because how can the most venerated Pottsfielders be so sure of what the black snow portends if all they have to back up their conviction is a hazy sense of nostalgia? 

“The Dark Lantern is placed in the heart of the town, awaiting its true heir. When the true heir touches it, their soul replaces the old Beast’s flame,” recites Nonna DiChioggia as she ties off her satin stitches. The other nonnas around her nod wisely. (“Yes, yes, that’s exactly how it goes.” “Exactly it.” “Has anyone seen the navy blue floss?”)

“That’s it?” asks Wirt. It sounds too simple. Too easy. He pokes himself with a needle and whimpers, sucking the blood off his skin. “Surely there’s m-more to it than _that…_ ”

“Perhaps,” concedes Nonna DiChioggia thoughtfully. “It was so long ago, _caro._ I was a girl, not yet planted.”

“Do you remember who it was?” Wirt’s pulse pounds through the prick in his thumb.

Nonna DiChioggia shakes her wood-masked head. “I do not. It was so long ago...”

Wirt ties a knot in the square he’s working on and makes an excuse about checking on Greg. The quilting circle hardly registers his exit.

The Bates family hanging wreaths tell Wirt that if a Beast is not chosen, the Unknown will crumble like a log chewed by decay. That the black snow is the herald of a much larger, much more final death. Then the twin uncles Bartholomew and Benjamin get into a fight about precisely how many centuries it’s been since their current Beast began his reign; Wirt leaves them when the argument devolves into name-calling and flinging berries at each other.

The Muscats dipping candles repeat how essential it is that the heir be willing, that they be worthy, but when Wirt asks if they remember which family The Beast came from all they can do is shrug and trim their wicks.

It’s Miss Clara that stops Wirt on his way to interrogate the Zebs. As the leader of the Party Planning Committee, she hears _everything—_ and she’s definitely heard about a boy shirking his responsibilities to ask about The Beast.

“I’m surprised you didn’t come to me first,” she says, pushing Wirt to sit on a hale bale just outside a shed. The hem of her burlap skirt is saturated with pitch from where she’s trudged through black snowdrifts. “I have access to all the Pottsfield records, you know.”

“Oh, right. I guess I th-thought you’d be too busy to talk to me,” Wirt blushes. He can sense Miss Clara smirking at him despite the ivory bones of her face being hidden by her winter mask. “So, do you—”

“No. I don’t know how the ceremony works. I don’t know how the new Beast is chosen. And I don’t know who our Beast was.” She tilts her head. “There is no record of him… or _any_ previous Beast, for that matter. Either his history was never shared or written down…”

“...Or it was destroyed,” Wirt finishes for her. Icicles creep up his spine. 

“I _do_ doubt that particular theory, though it’s possible. Probably, when enough generations came and went and nothing changed, the town stopped caring and forgot.”

“Why would they forget?” asks Wirt desperately. “Are you _sure_ nobody remembers? Are you positive? Isn’t this sort of a huge deal?!”

Miss Clara pets his hair back as if he’s Greg’s age. “When you think about it, the loss of memory isn’t that unusual. Our Beast is old. _Very_ old. Perhaps Enoch thought he’d be the last one, and didn’t bother to upkeep any records. Everyone else accepted the way things are. Were,” she corrects herself. Her voice is wistful. “Poor Enoch… Wirt? Are you alright?”

He is not alright. All at once the world is spinning around him, a vortex of black and white and grey, and Wirt wants to dig into the snow and past the earth and hide, hide, hide. He tries to articulate this to Miss. Clara, who is cupping his face in her polished phalangeal bones, but the young man can manage no more than a friable, tight-chested mewl. _Fear._ Out of nowhere. A lightning bolt in his heart.

“I’ll find your friend Beatrice,” Miss. Clara tells him calmly, steadily, meeting his wide brown eyes with empty ocular pits. “She usually brings you down from these anxious spells, right? I think her family is decorating the barn rafters… stay here.” 

Enoch’s right-hand woman marches away, leaving Wirt a gasping shuddering mess on his hay bale bench. He drops his head between his knees and gulps air like a fish. Great—he’s worked himself up into a fit. He ran around all afternoon following an obsessive thought, a pointless fixation, and soon Beatrice will be here to peck him between the eyes and tell him what a total idiot he is for sticking his big nose where it doesn’t belong…

His shadow stretches longer while he hyperventilates. The sun has crept lower and lower in its pearl-grey sky as Wirt wheeled around Pottsfield, freaking out over something that doesn’t concern him at all. The Beast will be here soon. Wirt isn’t ready, and the Nightmare of the Woods is coming—

No. He’s already here.

Wirt collapses off the bale when he feels it, his heart galloping. He can’t say how he knows, but he _knows;_ The Beast has arrived early to seek his replacement. _No._ Wirt silently cries, pressing his knuckles into the onyx ice. _Not yet. I have to—have to—_

The town square is unnaturally quiet when Wirt sprints through, running toward the kitchen where he’d left Greg. Crowds have clumped on either side of the road; they mutter and shove one another to get a better look at what’s stalking in from the forest, all them too on-edge to raise their voices. _The Beast is here. The Beast is here._ Shade cast by the setting sun is smoky indigo, pooling like tar between the houses; Wirt chokes as he cuts through it, the darkness tugging at him like a river’s current. Why won’t people get out of his way? Why are they all _standing_ there? Wirt needs them to _move_ so he can reunite with Greg—

He trips out of an alley and directly onto his face, sprawled like a slaughtered deer in the street. Horrified gasps and cries flutter around him. Wirt props himself up trembling arms, spitting sleet from his teeth, and freezes at the weight of a hideous shadow crushing his spine. 

The Beast looms over him. Wirt’s courage is incinerated in those fathomless white eyes.

“Out of my way, _pup.”_

It is a voice that sinks into his flesh and commands his marrow. Wirt cannot obey fast enough—crawling like a whipped cur on hands and knees from The Beast’s path. He had never known how vast the devil’s antlers were, how broad the span of his pelt-draped shoulders, how merciless that winter gaze. Wirt’s mouth dries into parchment. His guts turn inside out. The Beast, in Pottsfield. And with The Beast…

“We’ll go to the barn first, Pumpkin—all the candidates will see you there.” Enoch’s cat-skin strides amicably alongside the demon as they pass Wirt, who is still sitting in the slush with tears on his eyelashes. The mayor must have met his beloved at the border—eager to be the first to greet him. As if this is a date, and not a relinquishing of power and life. “Do you like all the decorations? You gave us a terribly short window to prepare, you know, but we all did our best, just for you…”

The Dark Lantern hangs off The Beast’s left antler. It gleams in the settling dusk, a spotlight on the obsidian velvet of snowfall, and glares at every Pottsfielder like a ruthless eye. Wirt watches it bob, a bloated metal spider, and his throat cinches shut.

He would swear he hears the Lantern singing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enoch calling Beast "Pumpkin" and Beast calling Wirt "pup" are 100% inspired by the Beastnoch fics of AnonymouToZ, who is the unchallenged Beastnoch king (go read all that romantic loveliness instead of this)


	3. meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wirt eavesdrops.

Wirt should go back to the kitchen. He has to grab Greg and stay with him for the rest of the evening. They’ll eat dinner in the barn with the Pottsfielders and Enoch and their honored guest Beast; after they’ve devoured their fill of roasted fowl and potatoes, they’ll dance with their neighbors until Greg is too tired to complain about Wirt ushering him to bed; they’ll go to sleep, tucked in their lonely threadbare cottage, unaware of what will take place between the Dark Lantern and the potential heirs; tomorrow morning they will wake up with a new reason to fear the dark parts of the woods.

 _The Lantern is no burden for a child._

It would be insane for Wirt to totter to his feet, wincing at his bruised knees, and trail after The Beast and Enoch like someone possessed. This is none of his business. Enoch hadn’t told Wirt anything, because Wirt doesn’t need to know. Go back to the kitchen. Find Greg.

But no one is watching Wirt stumble forward, away from where his brother might be waiting. They have all divided their separate ways—checking last-minute details, catching up with family, jittering with excitement—and pay no attention to the ghost of a lad sneaking to the big barn.

Those completing the feast decorations are politely directed out into the snow when Enoch and The Beast reach their destination. Only a small throng of adults—each of them distinguished members of Pottsfield—remain by the huge rolling doors. It is happening: the clandestine discussion that will determine who among the best will be considered an heir. Twenty individuals are the sole people who will live the ceremony that none can remember. They will be part of history. 

Wirt aches to see them. No fear mars their faces. They are as composed as if they are welcoming a diplomat from a faraway village, not a man-eating monster, and none falter at the trickling song that drifts like flurries from the Dark Lantern’s window. 

Enoch says something that brings dignified, placid smiles to his citizens. Then his maypole-self shepherds the volunteers inside the barn and slides the door shut with an oiled _clunk._

Wirt has to blink spots from his eyes, vision moth-eaten from staring at the Lantern’s light. There’s a south-facing window that can be reached by climbing a white oak growing near the barn’s russet-painted side; he’s shimmied up there a few times to watch the clouds with Beatrice on lazy summer days. As long as he isn’t caught, he’ll be able to spy on the meeting through that dusty glass…

Ice makes bark slippery and treacherous. Wirt huffs and swears as he climbs up the oak, toeing for familiar footholds carved into the trunk. “I’m crazy… this is dumb…” He slices his palm on an errant twig or shard of ice but hardly feels it; if he cannot reach the window he’ll chew off his own arm—that is how deeply Wirt’s insatiable curiosity festers.

His target branch bears a spot worn bald from all the days spent slung over it with his bluebird companion. Wirt claims his de facto seat and wipes ashen frost from the window until he’s melted a rough circle over the glass. His heartbeat gallops in his ear drums. Beatrice would go ballistic if she found out what he was doing…

The Beast stands so that the brilliance of the Lantern and his awful all-seeing eyes hits the south wall, facing Wirt. Enoch’s cat-skin sits next to his beloved like a faithful pet, fawning, and the tall maypole reposes out of the way with ribbons trailing languidly on the floor. The Lantern waits at The Beast’s feet. The Pottsfield volunteers have their back to the window, motionless and straight as they listen for what the Horned Lord wants of them.

“I never anticipated that so many would wish to take my stead,” muses the Unknown’s Gravedigger. His words fill the giant barn the way a lumbering bear fills its cave: commanding and aggressive, even at rest. “Especially, as Enoch put it, after I gave you ‘such a short window’ to prepare yourselves.”

“It must be done,” says Enoch with affected flippancy. His thrashing tail betrays his turmoil. “It is my own fault for not… anticipating this, and having a more thought-out plan before. Although you _could_ have warned me, Darling…”

“I apologize for not predicting my own demise, Field Cat,” Beast returns smoothly. “A lack of foresight, on my part. It shall not happen again.”

The Pottsfielders give their courteous, demure laughter. Wirt’s chest heaves around a clenched fist of misery. _A funeral._ Part of the ceremony is a funeral. It is worse to hear this confirmation of death from The Beast himself, to realize that the monster must perish and not merely retire. 

“Have they been properly briefed on what they’ve agreed to?” asks the Edelwood Gardener abruptly, peering down at Enoch. The careful laughter ceases. 

“We did not accept Enoch’s invitation lightly, Your Darkness,” ventures an older Pottsfield woman. One of the DiChioggia matrons. “When he explained what was at stake, many more than us stepped forward. The Unknown must have a Beast—it is a law we’ve all grown up with. We are not afraid.”

Wirt rubs his disbelieving eyes. For a moment—a fraction, a blink—the interior of the barn had gone night-dark with The Beast’s furious glare for stars.

“You didn’t tell them, Harvest Lord?” 

It is a question whose reproach is wrapped in genuine fondness, softening the blow. Enoch’s cat-skin prickles its dusky hackles. “I… did not think it a necessary detail, Pumpkin. Since it does not matter in the long run.”

The Beast sighs… but there is affection in that exhale, and the admonishment rising in his words has the playfulness of someone catching their significant other in a trick that’s crossed the line. “It _does_ matter, my cunning feline friend. The Lantern must pass to one who fully understands the fate they are accepting… consent through deception is not consent at all.”

“Dear Heart, they _do_ know what a momentous undertaking the mantle is, these are selfless men and women willing to leave their lives behind to tend the forest—”

“Do you know what that means? Leaving your lives behind?” The Beast asks the gathering. Several people exchange wary glances, their faith in Enoch unshaken but their trust of the Horned Lord a shivering thing between them.

“We cannot return to the way things were,” an older man toward the front states with steady confidence. Wirt recognizes the salt-and-pepper hair of Mr. Pankow, whose family in Pottsfield is known to produce the loveliest squash varieties this side of the Unknown. “We will never be planted with our ancestors. We will have to await a specific invitation from Enoch to enter Pottsfield soil, so we cannot visit our loved ones whenever we wish. Our priority will no longer be our families, but the forest and the Edelwood.”

“We will walk the path of hope and despair,” adds a woman. It’s Miss. Casper, one of the party planners. “It would be our duty to… to test the lost souls of the Unknown. To drag them toward despair, so that they might appreciate the gleam of hope. And… and if they fail, reap them for the Lantern.”

“This is all true,” The Beast admits, inclining his regal crown. Enoch kneads anxiously at the leaf-strewn animal furs that cloak his shoulders; the Forest King ignores him. “Anyone else?”

“What more could you mean, Beast?” asks Mr. Pankow in the most gruffly deferential way he can. “We know that we’d be leaving behind husbands, wives, children, friends… we have all of us accepted the sacrifice your noble role requires. And we accept it gladly, knowing that this sacrifice would preserve the very world that we live in for future generations.”

Everyone murmurs their agreement. Their altruistic bravery leaves Wirt stunned. How can they stand there, unafraid, with the Dark Lantern singing its haunting melody in the dim? How can they face an eternity of loneliness, of living as a hated outcast, without even the thinnest sliver of fear?

A long, shadowy pause, textured by the flame’s subtle music. Then The Beast… begins to laugh.

“Oh you fine _courageous_ souls,” he chuckles. The sound is emerald moss on a rotting log, is ice crackling over a brook, is the scrape of insects under wood. The glow of his monstrous eyes dances amber and yellow. “Your mayor left out the most important part. You will not merely be walking away from your lives—you will be burying those lives forever. They will cease to exist. _You_ will cease to exist. There will be only the forest that traps you. Only the trees you put in the soil. Only surrender.”

The antler-crowned demon’s laughter grows in volume—a voracious thing, clawing at the sides of the barn and rattling Wirt’s bones. The boy’s teeth chatter in his skull. His body is aching. Numb. He wants to run back home, to hide under his bed, but it is as if he has grown roots and cannot move—

“You will be _forgotten,_ ” The Beast snarls suddenly, eyes flashing autumn-red. “When you walk away from your life here, everyone you’ve ever met will cease to know your name. You will become The Beast, become _no one,_ and you will die completely and forever in the minds of all the loved ones you once cherished.” He whirls on Enoch, darkness radiating from his terrible form so that the entire barn is drowned in it. “There, Lying One. _Now_ they understand the task they have so _readily_ put their souls on the line for.”

Utter silence. The atmosphere is spun glass waiting to shatter.

Enoch taps the first crack. “Darling… was that truly necessary?”

“Well?” The Beast hisses at the crowd instead. “Who among you would stay? Who still wishes for the suicide of their own history?”

Mr. Howden’s afflicted voice warbles up from the back. “Enoch, is he telling us falsehoods? Is this a test?”

The cat’s tail swishes in agitation. His ears are flattened against his head, his pupils wittled to slits. He looks back and forth from his beloved people to his beloved Beast, paws pacing to and fro on the straw-covered floor. “I… I did not think it mattered. Please forgive me. If your ties to Pottsfield are erased, it is as if you never had ties to Pottsfield to begin with, you see? So you would not be giving anything up… there would be no mourning, no wracking grief, nothing at all to fear. This is a needless scare tactic, Pumpkin…”

“Needless?” purrs The Beast. He picks his lantern up off the floor—and from where he stares, transfixed, Wirt feels his stomach rise like an air bubble from the bottom of a lake. “Nonsense, my tricky kitten. The Dark Lantern cannot be wielded by one unprepared for its weight… one would certainly be devoured by one’s own despair, first.”

To their credit, the Pottsfielders do not flinch when The Beast casts the Lantern’s beam upon them, although all of their faces are deathly pale. None make a motion to walk from the barn. They are too dedicated. Or too proud.

“We should… at least tell our families,” says Mr. Pankow at last. Several men and women around him nod, almost frantically, as if desperate for a way out of the commitment they made. “They should know how much more they stand to lose.”

“They will lose _nothing,”_ Enoch insists plaintively. “You worry for no reason, my dear citizens! Do not let The Beast dissuade you!” 

“Why not, Dearest? Let them choose for themselves, and be weeded from my sight like thistles from your fields.” The Beast’s glare is a pool of molten colors, red and gold and skeins of white that make Wirt dizzy where the colors splash upon the rafters. 

Enoch’s cat-skin abruptly spits angrily, spine arching. “What game are you playing? You know as well as I what will happen if none step up to claim your role—”

“Of course I do, Prince of Plenty,” jeers The Beast. “Aren’t we playing the same game? Haven’t we always?”

His wooden claws scritch under Enoch’s chin, but the cat swipes his own claws back and hisses furiously. Although his current form is small—the perfect size to curl up on the lap of a child, or sit one someone’s windowsill for a chat, or to tangle underfoot during a summer line-dance—Enoch’s immense _presence_ is enough to overflow the barn; the sheer force of the mayor submerges Wirt until he feels as though he is under water, pressure fit to burst against his ears, and he struggles to breathe past the crushing weight on his lungs. The town rarely sees their leader’s ire so potent. So out of control. They always forget that the mysterious, benevolent being that protects them is a monster himself.

“Fine.” A harsh single syllable, spoken like a pounded fist. Enoch turns his back on The Beast, hackles and tail at maximum volume, and digs his claws into the ground. “Have it your way. Frighten off all your willing heirs, if you want. You’ve always made things harder than they need to be.”

The Beast hums, the sound rich and lilting compared to Enoch’s brittle, suffocating energy. “That is my way, Harvest Lord. That is the way of the Hope-Eater.”

Wirt pries himself away from the scene before his terror makes him do something foolish that would reveal his shameful eavesdropping… and before he loses himself in the sadness that Enoch projects like a noose tightening inch-by-inch around his throat.


	4. field

The sky spans tangerine-rose over Pottsfield rooftops, nighttime creeping lavender in the direction of where The Beast had left the woods. When Wirt marches out toward the fields—breathing hard from the lingering tendrils of Enoch’s hopelessness—he focuses on the thin red line that stripes the opposite horizon. Black snow cushions his footfalls like velvet. Winter is always quiet, the world sleeping as it waits for spring, but the silence surrounding him _roars_ with the desperation of something that is wounded but cannot scream. A soundless cry, grasping at him. Fighting for air in lungs that are collapsing, decaying, becoming mulch under the frost.

Without a clean veil of white beneath him to reflect color back toward the sky, Wirt feels as though he is walking on a void.

Breath hitching, the young man staggers to the nearest fence and grips the rough-hewn wood until his tendons stand ivory in his cold-pinkened hands. Soon the sun will set, and he’ll be alone in a pitch-black field with only the stars to guide him back to town. He should go. Greg is waiting for him. People will have so many exasperated words to whip Wirt with when he returns, reeds of shame to strike him down, and it’ll only get worse the longer he avoids them. The feast will start soon. Greg is waiting for him.

Wirt crawls along the fence as if blind, deeper into the field.

His skudding palms displace sheets of coal, black sloughing off the fence and hitting the ground without noise. The Dark Lantern—somewhere in the barn, guarded by Enoch and the Beast—is a song played too low for him to pick out the notes. It wants him to learn its music the way he puzzles out a scherzo on his clarinet… it needs _someone_ to remember the melody, for when the one who knows it now passes on—

“Wirt? Is this where you’ve been?!”

A furious chirp, interrupting Wirt’s thoughts like a clash of symbols. He startles and his fingernails dig into the rail he clutches. “B-Beatrice?” he blurts at the avian shape hurtling toward him. “H-How did you—”

“Miss Clara came and got me from the barn, said you were having one of your _fits,”_ the bluebird sneers. She masks her worry with acrid scorn; the more concerned she feels, the meaner she gets. “I looked for you all over the place! Seems like half the town saw you today, but when _I_ need to find you, you vanish into thin air! My family needed my help with the rafters, ya know. They weren’t able to finish by the time Enoch kicked them out of the barn.”

Beatrice pauses, flapping hard with her legs pulled up toward her rust-kissed breast. Her beady eyes narrow. She expects Wirt to speak—to explain where he’d been, maybe to ask why Enoch had banished the flock from the barn, _anything._ But Wirt doesn’t want to admit how the passing of The Beast’s mantle has been a hook in his mind all day… that he’d been chasing his own tail instead of being useful… that he’s upset himself over absolutely nothing, just like always, a constant disaster. 

His ears burn. The sky is bruising itself blue and violet. “I needed some air,” he mumbles weakly. “Sorry for worrying you.” 

“Yeah, well, whatever. It’s time to… where are you going?”

Wirt can’t go back to town. He drops one hand to his side and keeps the other on the fence, a dock to prevent him from drowning, and keeps walking in the same direction—toward the far corner of the field, where corn grows twice as tall as he is in the summer.

Beatrice keeps in line next to him, purposefully batting his head with her right wing as she flies. “Hello? Wirt? Earth to Wirt? Are you listening to me?” He is mute, mouth a cut line in his pale face, staring straight ahead. “Where have you been all day, huh? I’m not the only one who’s had a tough time finding you…”

The inky snow has turned the trees into monsters, branches like limbs swollen by a tourniquet. The forest is dying. Quickly. 

“You know you were needed back there, right? Greg’s been looking for you, high and low, working himself into knots—”

“Busy,” Wirt barks, shrugging his cloak closer around his shoulders. A splinter might’ve nicked the base of his thumb; the pain comes and goes so quickly he can’t tell, and he won’t check. “I’ll… I’ll go back in a minute, alright? Let me think for a little bit…”

“Oh, sorry, you’ve been _busy._ I get it,” Beatrice grouses with wool-thick sarcasm. “Would you even _remember_ that you had a brother if I weren’t here to remind you?”

He’s cold. He’s so cold. He wants to curl in front of a fire and let its orange glow wash over him, to warmly wash away the bite of glacial white light—

Beatrice wings him upside the head and Wirt yelps, clutching the back of his skull. He glares at Beatrice and throws his anger in front of his fear. “What the heck was that for?!”

His bluebird friend swoops across to jeer at him face-to-face, nearly close enough to peck his nose. “I get it, Wirt—I have siblings _too._ Way more siblings than you do, if you’ll kindly recall. I know it’s nice to ditch them every once in a while to get some time for yourself, but you have a _job_ to do: you’re the Big Brother. Greg _needs_ you right now—so pull it together!”

“I thought you were here to see if I was okay.” Wirt shoos her away with an impatient hand; Beatrice snaps at him with her beak, and Wirt quickly brings his palm to his chest with a dark glower. “Why’re you so w-worried about Greg? When I left him in the kitchen, he had everyone’s aunt and uncle _fawning_ over him. What exactly does he ‘need’ me for? He can take care of himself for five minutes—”

“He hasn’t seen you all day! Nobody has! You can’t just abandon him whenever you want to recite poetry to the woods or contemplate your melancholy—it’s hard for a kid with no parents to be by himself—”

“ _I’m_ a kid with no parents!”

Wirt’s thunderclap shout ruptures the great wide space and startles sparrows and starlings into flight. His heart is trampled-flat and frosted over like the dormant rows of wheat. The only heat is held in his tears, acid-burning in the corners of his furious eyes. 

“ _My_ parents are dead too, if you’ll kindly recall.” He throws Beatrice’s words back like stones; she flinches in the air. “I didn’t ask to be Greg’s sole guardian. I didn’t ask to be the one he’s supposed to trust and look up to. I’m nobody… I’m not a good role model, or person, or anything…”

He is so tired of never measuring up. He’s so tired of _his_ anxieties and _his_ stupid terrors being forgotten the moment Greg needs him. 

“But you’re all he has,” Beatrice falters. Her tone is taut, see-sawing between anger and hurt. Her feet stretch to him as if she wants to land on his shoulder. “I’m kinda failing to get this across but… all you need to do is be his brother. That’s all I’m saying. Be there for him. Come back to town, and… I dunno, give him a hug. Let him know you’re okay. Today is weird and stressful and… impossible to understand, but family is supposed to be reliable. Maybe you’ll feel better when you’re not stewing in your own misery.”

Beatrice doesn’t get it. She carries the weight of a curse, true, but she doesn’t carry it _alone._ She has never been alone. She has her doting brothers and sisters who seem to embrace the gift of the sky, and two loving parents who help her shoulder the onus when the burden of feathers pulls her toward the earth. She has people to support her from every side. A nest to rest in. 

Wirt has a responsibility that he was never ready for, and a town of people expecting him to step up as if he knows what he’s doing.

“Sorry,” the boy mutters quietly after a beat. His gaze sweeps the mottled snow, painted blacker while they both breathe.

Beatrice sighs, a long-suffering drag. “Well… sorry for jumping down your throat. To be honest? I’m spooked. It’s bad enough when Enoch invites his eldritch hubby in for tea on full moons… and we’re all going to sit there nicely and have dinner like it’s somebody’s birthday? Gross. Who’s going to have the guts to ask the Horned Lord to pass the salt?”

She wants him to laugh, so Wirt consciously cracks a smile that does not reach his eyes. “One of the grandfathers in the kitchen said that if I burnt a pie, I’d be turned into Edelwood.”

“Wirt Palmer? Burn a pie? You’d sooner carry the Dark Lantern.”

“Don’t joke about that.” Wirt’s guts give a python squeeze. Beatrice plops down near the crook of his neck and tweaks his ear: her way of distracting him out of a spiral. 

“This whole Beast thing really freaked you out, huh?” she asks in a kinder tone. “It’ll be fine, though. Enoch already picked out a bunch of contenders. I feel bad for whoever gets chosen, but… it’s not like they’re _dying._ I bet the mayor will even let them visit Pottsfield until they’ve gotten used to their job, see their family and all that—”

_Everyone you’ve ever met will cease to know your name_

Wirt takes off running, forcing Beatrice to stab him with her claws as she holds on for dear life. He isn’t going to Pottsfield—he’s sprinting beside the fence to the end of the field, where shadow swallows the distant corner, eyes burning as he tries to discern the wracked shapes piercing their own crown above the treeline—

The fence falls apart toward the end, rails and posts cracked and discarded in the snow-soot. There _is_ no corner at the end, because four monolithic trees have taken root, blurring the border between civilization and wilderness. Their obsidian bark seems one with the icicles dripping from their branches; their trunks—wider than three men could fit their arms around—are sculpted with subtle bends and twists as if pushed by the wind; Wirt has to crane his neck back, and then farther back still, to glimpse where the trees scrape the indigo sky as he stands dumbfounded at their bases. They are not the biggest trees he’s ever seen, but they _are_ the most frightening… he knows with a certainty that roosts in his intestines that if there’d been just a _gleam_ of more light from the stars, he would discover faces carved among the deep-grooved whorls. 

Edelwood. Growing here for a long, long time, and Wirt had not realized until now.

Or perhaps… he’d always known that they were there, and simply forgotten.

He starts to shake, but Beatrice does not complain because she’s bundled so tightly on his shoulder he can feel her tension through the muscles of his neck. “Huh,” the bluebird says faintly, unable to muster her steel. “Those sure are… big trees.”

Wirt’s inhales whistle through his windpipe. “Beatrice, do you know those Edelwood?”

The bluebird screws her face up, snapping out of her awestruck state. “My family never flies around here.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Wirt presses. “Do you know these Edelwood? Did you know they were growing here? Who they were?”

“I… don’t care? They’re not the graves of anybody _I_ used to care about.”

A harsh statement, but one shared by most people who have to cope with a demon that regularly reaps souls and plants them in the earth. It’s senseless to grieve at every unmarked grave one comes across.

“Now that I see them, I wonder how I could have missed them,” Wirt quavers, “but I have a feeling that when I go to sleep tonight, I won’t think about these trees again unless I go walking along this fence far enough.” 

“You’re usually not out here, nerd,” Beatrice snips irritably. She wants to leave; her teeny frame is quivering though she’ll never admit it. “Stop making it weird.”

An idea. “What if they’re the old—”

Wirt’s vocal cords snap shut on the word _Beasts._ He literally can’t speak it. He gags, saliva pooling in his mouth, and Beatrice squawks at him in disgust. “Ew, Wirt! Breathe!”

Syllables are strangled in his throat before he can utter them. Wirt brings a hand to his Adam’s apple, choking, drooling, and frantically searches for phrases to convey what’s in his skull. _The Beast is always forgotten—no one will remember who he is—we’ll all move on and The Beast will be alone—_

Beatrice is hauling on the collar of his cloak, ripping him from the vice clamping the space under his jaw, her voice shrill. “That’s IT. We’re going to the barn NOW. Move those damn feet, and—and stay with me, okay? Focus on ME. I’m right here, Wirt, and so are you—so come back!”

All the boy can do is nod, spitting into the snow by his shoe. He hopes it landed nowhere near an Edelwood root.

“You’ll need to guide us back, got it? You know bird eyes are useless in the dark.” Beatrice pecks him once on the top of his head—hard—and flits back to her position by his ear. Always with him. No matter what. “I dunno what your problem is, but if you don’t find Greg and both of you a plate of food to eat I will kill you in your sleep. Keep it together for the feast. For your brother. For… me.”

Wirt can’t say “yes.” He nods again, wiping forced tears from his eyes, and turns obediently to Pottsfield.

Behind him, the sun sets. The field is a bottomless black lake and Wirt is treading water home.

Behind him, a few stars go out… leaving holes where they’d hung in the night.

**Author's Note:**

> You'd think that I would already have a bunch of fics saved up for a prompt week that I myself created, but you'd be wrong.  
> https://xathira.tumblr.com/post/638423079485325312
> 
> January is my birthday month and I make the rules.


End file.
